


Cat's Cradle

by spontaneite



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Animal Transformation, Cats, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Nekomata, Reincarnation, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14548578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spontaneite/pseuds/spontaneite
Summary: Nearly two months after Sai’s disappearance, a young white cat came up to Hikaru and tried desperately to interact with him.He shut the door in its noisy face and felt no remorse whatsoever.





	Cat's Cradle

The cat announced its entry to Hikaru’s life with a loud, thin-sounding yowl, just as he was reaching the threshold of his door. It had been a long day. He was _tired_. He was more than ready to just…get into the house, and go upstairs, and lay on his bed determinedly _not_ looking at the goban until dinner, but…well, when something makes a loud and startling noise in one’s proximity, one tends to notice.

He stopped, house key in hand, and looked reflexively in the direction of the noise.

The yowl belonged, predictably, to a cat. Less predictably, it was sprinting in Hikaru’s direction as though its life depended on it. It was small, very fluffy, and shockingly white in colour, and most of all: _noisy._ It positively _wailed_ at the sight of him, carrying on in a thin ululating meow-yowl that was so loud it made him flinch. The long, gangly lines of its limbs made him think _kitten._ He was no cat expert by any means, but this one was nowhere near the size of an adult.

Hikaru stepped away unthinkingly at the sight of the small white fluffy thing pelting its way towards him, and shoved the key into the lock. It was a fast little bastard, though, and reached his feet in very short order, staring pleadingly up at him with unnervingly blue eyes.

“ _Moowww,_ ” The cat expressed, reaching out to pat at his trouser leg with a tiny paw, frantically and insistently. It wasn’t using claws, but he was a little edgy at the thought that it might start.

“I don’t have anything.” He said to it, as though it could understand him. It was probably hungry, right? No other reason for a cat to be bothering him. There _were_ cats in the neighbourhood, but they were all antisocial things or were otherwise kept indoors. This one looked neat and clean enough that it had to have a home.

“ _Maaaaaaao-“_

Hikaru felt like the incessant noise might have annoyed him, once. Months ago. Now, he just felt tired. He wanted it to be quiet. Very gently, he shoved it away with his foot and opened the door.

Without any remorse, he shut the door in the cat’s face. The click of it was accompanied by a short, very indignant mewl. Akari probably would have scolded him if she’d seen it, since she tended to go in for cute fuzzy animals. Hikaru, though....he felt nothing at the next sad-sounding meow, and when the noise started up again, he kicked off his shoes and headed into the house. “I’m home,” He called, dully, and trudged himself and his bag upstairs.

At the side of his room, the goban was collecting dust. The sight of it, even in the periphery of his vision, was enough to make his breath stutter. He gritted his teeth, ignored it, and strode forwards to settle on the edge of his bed.

He sat there limply for a while, like a puppet with its strings cut. Outside his window, he could still faintly hear the cat wailing. He ignored it. He ignored the goban. He ignored the rows of manga arrayed in his room that he’d once enjoyed, the kifu that had built up, the memories-

He breathed, and laid down on the bed, and felt unwarranted exhaustion press into him like a physical weight. After a while, he extracted a textbook from his bag, and began leafing aimlessly through it. He didn’t care about the words on the page, didn’t even really read them, but…there was nothing else to do.

It was just another day.

 

\---

 

The world hadn’t felt right, lately. It hasn’t felt right for a while. Hikaru woke up exhausted and didn’t get any more energetic throughout the day. He dragged himself out of bed and through the motions of a living person, brushed his teeth and showered and occasionally conveyed food into his body. He walked himself to school and stared blankly at the teachers all day, and then he walked himself home again. Once he was home, he usually just laid down or slept. He didn’t feel like doing anything else.

The days all passed by the same, as though shrouded in a fog that sapped the life and soul from him. Sometimes he passed by familiar places and felt memories tickling at the back of his mind. Sometimes he indulged them, and stood near-motionless on street corners and parks as the regret and longing burst viscerally through his apathy. The days were all like that: . All the damn same.

This one was a bit different, though.

When Hikaru left the house, the cat was still there. Or rather, it had been hiding nearby, and when he left the house it announced its presence again, throwing itself into his path with a chirruping call. Again, it looked straight up at him, triangular ears sharply raised and its weirdly blue eyes wide.

Hikaru stared down at it, considered telling it to go away, but he didn’t really have the energy. The words bubbled on his lips, briefly, then dissipated. Talking was more tiring than it should be. He sighed, stepped over the cat, and began the walk to school. The cat followed, meowing loudly and weaving through his legs, but that just meant he had to be careful not to trip. He thought he ought to be annoyed. Instead, he felt nothing, and kept walking. Eventually the cat got tired, and fell behind, and his morning was normal again.

Hikaru passed his day as was usual, viewing the world as if through a glass window. The colour and motion of it was all there, but...he wasn’t, somehow. Looking at other people felt strange. They seemed so much more animated than he was. Hikaru watched them without comprehension, and listened to his teachers with half an ear, and then when the school day ended he headed home again.

Except, when he got closer to home, the stupid cat was waiting at the roadside. Waiting for _him,_ it had to be, by this point. Hikaru’s face contorted into something almost like confusion as it came up to him yet again, now looking less immaculately white and a bit scruffier, as though it had had a trying day. It sat in front of him and meowed almost demandingly, its ears now panning outwards rather than forwards. Hikaru didn’t really have any experience with cats, so had no idea what that meant. He didn’t care, either.

“Go away, cat.” He said to it, like he’d tried to earlier, and stepped over it. He walked lethargically onwards.

It followed after him, and after a moment, proceeded to start making possibly the worst noise he'd heard in months. A high, insistent caterwauling that spilled into the air around him and made him wince, too loud and discordant and wholly unpleasant to listen to. He walked faster, gritting his teeth as he felt the seed of a headache take root, and tried to escape the white menace that had decided to fixate on him for some reason.

It was only down the road from his house that someone opened the door and shouted “Hey!”

Hikaru stopped to see who it was. More surprisingly, the cat did too, the horrible noise cutting off as its little white head whipped towards the door the voice had sprung from, ears straight up and whiskers quivering. The man in the doorway was one Hikaru had seen before, but never spoken to. A neighbour, but not an immediate one. He didn’t know his name, but did feel wary when the man ran out of the door towards him.

The cat took one look at the man and bolted in the opposite direction, a quick white streak that disappeared around a nearby fence and out of reach within seconds. Hikaru didn’t have to find out whether or not he should imitate it because the man stopped and cursed, then looked at him. “Where’d you find the cat?” he asked, finally.

Hikaru stared, and gathered his words for a few seconds. “...it’s been following me around. I just found it outside my house the other day.”

“Huh.” The man expressed, looking at him pensively. “Well, if you see him again, I’ll give you 800 yen if you bring him back to me. He escaped the other day and I’ve not been able to catch him.”

Hikaru shrugged. 800 yen was like…not a lot, but he definitely wasn’t getting any money from games at the moment. He ignored the sting of the thought. “Sure.” He agreed, and after a moment, managed to muster enough curiosity to ask a question. “Is he your cat then?”

“Well, to a degree.” The man hedged, and craned his head in the direction the cat had absconded. “I breed cats, you see. He’s one of the latest litter, but he’s the biggest troublemaker I’ve ever bred. Pain in the backside, really.” He sighed. “I don’t want him run over or starving though, so if you can, grab him for me. He’s too young to be away from his mother.”

“Sure.” Hikaru said again, his momentary flicker of interest extinguished. He angled himself away from the man. “I need to get home now.” The words were blunt, but he didn’t have the energy to whet them.

He headed home, and didn’t care that he hadn’t learned the neighbour’s name.

\---

Hikaru was not surprised to see the cat the next morning. It burst from a nearby hedgerow as he closed the front door, now looking distinctly dishevelled and a bit miserable. Its fur had collected an assortment of leaves, twigs, and what looked like most of a cobweb, and its underside was wet. It had rained in the night; maybe it had had to sleep on wet floor.

It trotted up to him much more lethargically than before, looked up, and made possibly the saddest, most pathetic noise Hikaru had ever heard. Hikaru didn’t even _like_ cats, but he instantly felt more sympathetic towards it at the sound. It was utterly involuntary.

Hikaru sighed, bent down, and scooped the cat up with a grimace. It didn’t weigh much, but the wet fur felt cold and nasty on his hands, so he started walking immediately. The cat made a surprised-sounding chirp and squirmed a little in his hand, looking up inquisitively. Hopefully, even. “Mow?” It asked, voice all high and kittenish, as though it wanted to know what he was doing.

It was a cat, though. He wasn’t going to explain himself to a cat. Instead, he walked very briskly down the road, and apparently that did all the explaining necessary. The cat noticed where he was walking, went rigid in his grip, and flattened its ears to its skull immediately. Quietly, it hissed at him.

Hikaru did not give a fuck. He kept walking.

The cat did not approve.

Once he’d come within doorbell-ringing range of the neighbour’s door, the low hiss escalated into a very offended yowl, and then the cat squirmed out of his hands like some kind of liquid. It landed neatly on the ground, looked up at him indignantly, and offered one last hiss before slinking away into the next house’s garden.

Hikaru watched it go, and shrugged. He’d tried. And now he had to get to school.

\---

He didn’t see the cat again for the rest of the day, but the next morning, it was there outside the house again. It looked _exhausted,_ long tail dragging low and its fur gone completely filthy. Its movements were sluggish and weak. It uttered a soft, plaintive noise at the sight of him, and tried weakly to nose its way past him into the house.

Hikaru closed the door, picked it up, and headed for the neighbour again. He did believe the guy’s assertion about its intelligence, because the cat seemed to _know_ where he was taking it. It hissed again, quietly, but didn’t struggle. It sagged into his hands with defeat.

He rang the doorbell and waited for someone to answer. He heard several meows from within, and someone scrambling for the door. The person who answered wasn’t the man he’d seen before, but a woman about the same age. She took one look at the cat in his hands and gasped.

“Oh, you caught him!” She exclaimed, immediately reaching out for the cat. It hissed at her, but made no attempt to prevent the hand-over. “Thank god, we were really getting worried.”

“He doesn’t seem to be doing that great.” Hikaru ventured, after a moment, wiping his hands off on his trousers. He now had cat hair on his clothes. “All…weak, and floppy.”

The woman raised the utterly defeated-looking kitten to eye level, and stared at it severely. “ _That_ is what a cat gets when it goes _days_ without eating.” She said, as though she expected the cat to both understand her _and_ be ashamed of itself. “We might have to take him to the vet, even.”

The cat looked appropriately horrified at that. It offered a small, pathetic meow that sounded weirdly like ‘iie’, but that was just chance. Cats made all sorts of weird noises, even if it was a big coincidence that this time it sounded like ‘no’.

“We’ll see.” The woman who expected a cat to understand her said, to the cat.

Hikaru had done his good deed for the day and was distinctly impatient to be on his way. “I’ve got to go to school now.” He said, and stepped away from the door. “…I hope the cat gets better.” He added, with some sincerity. The stupid thing looked completely pathetic like that.

“Thank you, Shindou-kun!” She said brightly to him, proving that she apparently knew all the neighbours’ names even if he didn’t. She transferred the cat to one hand and reached beside the door with the other, producing a wad of yen a moment later. “My husband said 800 yen as a reward, yes? Here you are.”

He blinked, having actually forgotten about the reward part of the deal, and agreeably took the money from her. “Thanks.” He acknowledged, vaguely, and then left.

He didn’t see the cat again for over a week.

\---

Eight days later, he spotted it by the door as he came home, a flagrantly noticeably white shape against the natural colours around it. It was a fair bit bigger, and looked healthy again, and the tail that rose at the sight of him was almost feathery in its long-haired glory. It meowed exultantly at him, and he sighed. It looked pretty full of energy. He doubted it would go back to its house again easily.

Hikaru eyed it, wondering how it had escaped again, considering his chances of getting it back to the neighbour without getting scratched, and as he did…there was…something. Something in the corner of his eye.

He turned, and followed the movement, and then whipped fully around when he realised where it was coming from.

He was _certain_ he’d seen something move in his window.

_Sai._ The name thudded throughout his consciousness, strongly enough to take his breath away. He opened the front door faster than he ever had before, kicked his shoes off and sprinted for the stairs as he slammed the front door in the cat’s face. He ignored his mother’s surprised shout, and turned, opened his bedroom door, hoping, _praying-_

He stood in the doorway, gasping for breath, as the sight of the person in his room fell sickeningly upon him.

It was Isumi.

That was…surprising. He would never have expected to come home and find Isumi there, but…

“Oh. Isumi.” He said, softly.

Not Sai.

His eyes shuttered, his breath slid back into him, he slumped. Disappointment cut sharply and mercilessly deep, more horrid by far than the low-level misery he’d learned to put up with over the last two months. In the space of one breath, he berated himself for daring to have _hope._ How many times had he done this, now? How many times had he thought he’d heard something in his room, and rushed up and _hoped_ and had that utterly crushed by the empty room? It was too much.

Nonetheless, Isumi was in his room, for some reason, and that was real. That was something he had to deal with.

The events of the next hour utterly upended his life.

\---

Hikaru didn’t go to school the next day. He had too much to think about – too much to arrange. He gathered each of his letters from the Go Association onto his floor, examined all the missed matches, grimaced and hemmed and hawed and tried to figure out how to move forwards from there. The game with Isumi sat, incomplete, where they’d left it the day before. Hikaru regretted not finishing it, but…what with the crying and intense emotions and life-upheaval, he’d not been in a state for it. Isumi had been understanding, despite him only coming over for a game in the first place, but he regretted it anyway.

He regretted a lot of things.

Thoughts swam in his head. _Touya is a sandan now,_ he thought, incredulous and terrified. The gulf between them had yawned again, suddenly, or rather it _had been_ yawning for the last two months, but now he _knew_ about it and the knowledge was intolerable, absolutely _unacceptable._ He couldn’t bear to think about how far behind he’d fallen in these two months he’d spent in a stupor, but-

Those months were important, too.

More than even the thought of the yawning chasm between himself and Touya, Hikaru was thinking of Sai. He was thinking of the familiar hands he’d played against Isumi, the trace of presence in them, like the ghost of a ghost. A glimpse of Sai, who he wanted so badly to see again. Who he _still_ wanted to see again. Who he might never see again.

_I was denying it._ Hikaru thought to himself, staring at the goban. _Sai is gone. I just…didn’t want to admit it._

Now, the only way he could see Sai again was by playing, and even then…it wasn’t the same.

_I want to see him._ The thought _ached,_ but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He could _play_ now, it was…it was _okay_ for him to play, he thought it was alright and there wasn’t anything else to be done, because Sai was _gone_ except for what he’d left behind in _Hikaru’s_ Go.

He’d wanted so badly to play again. Now he could. He _would._ It was a tremendous relief, but at the same time…it was a bit of a pyrrhic victory. He _intensely_ anticipated his next games, and felt guilty for it, because it meant that Sai wasn’t coming back, and that he’d accepted that. It was hard to know how to feel about it. He missed Go so badly, but he missed Sai more. If it _was_ a question of trading Go for Sai, the choice was obvious. But it wasn’t. And so he was more than slightly conflicted.

It would pass. He hoped. For now, he had to focus on catching up, and getting ready to return to the Go world.

He utterly forgot about the persistent white cat, until later in the evening.

\---

“Hikaru,” His mother said to him over dinner, looking confused but pleased at the apparent utter change in his mood. “Have you noticed a white cat around the house recently? It keeps trying to get inside when I open the door.”

He blinked as the existence of the weird white stalker-cat occurred to him again. “Oh. Yeah.” He said, automatically. “It’s one of the neighbours’, down the street, the one across from the weird shaped sakura tree?”

“The Shimura house?”

“If that’s what they’re called.” He answered diplomatically, to a tolerant sigh. “Anyway, they breed cats or something, and one of them keeps escaping. It keeps following me around, I dunno why.”

“Did you feed it?” She asked, pragmatically, and looked satisfied when he shook his head. “Good. That makes it strange that it’s following you, though.”

“It’s just a weird cat. If I can catch it again, I’ll take it back to the Shimura house.”

And that’s precisely what he did.

The next morning, he opened the door with no intention of going to school. Instead, he looked around, and with very little delay, the cat emerged from the undergrowth, once again starting to look bedraggled. “Hi, cat.” He said to it as it appeared.

It looked confused but delighted. The tail rose, tentatively. “Mrow?” it inquired, and padded closer.

He bent down to try to pick it up, but it skipped away from his hands, looking affronted. Its ears twitched back. Apparently it had learned that he only picked it up for purposes it disapproved of. “Look.” He said to it, as though he were Shimura-san and thought the cat could understand him. “Either you let me take you back, or you just hang around starving until I take you back anyway.”

The cat’s ears flicked back up again. The long, fluffy tail lashed, almost thoughtfully. It jerked its head towards his still-open front door and meowed meaningfully. Hikaru immediately felt weird for ascribing intention to what was just a cat’s random behaviour. He shrugged, and tried to pick it up again.

It hissed at him, begrudgingly, but didn’t try to get away. It made disapproving noises all the way to the Shimura house, but stayed obediently put, almost as if it had understood him. It hadn’t, of course, but it _seemed_ that way.

It was the male Shimura who answered the door this time. He took one look at Hikaru and the errant cat and smiled, ruefully. “You caught him again, I see.” He said, and held out his hands to receive it. Hikaru obligingly handed it over, feeling reflexively guilty at the utterly betrayed look the cat gave him. There was no reason for him to be guilty, but cats had a way of making you feel bad for basically anything, from what he knew.

“It wasn’t hard. He didn’t try to get away this time.” Hikaru explained, wondering if he was going to get money this time as well. It hardly mattered, given 800 yen was basically nothing, and given he was going to be returning to his job soon, but…it was something.

“Maybe you’re learning that it’s hard to live outside, eh?” Shimura-san said to the cat, apparently mimicking his wife in how he seemed to take it as a given that the cat actually understood him. The cat offered a low, unhappy noise. The man shook his head, and looked up at Hikaru. “Do you have a minute? I’d like to have a quick word with you about this cat, since he seems so set on following you around.”

Hikaru’s eyebrows went up. “....Okay?” He said, after a moment, and shuffled on his feet. “I can’t be long, though, I told my mum I was just coming here and then going back.” He said that very clearly. The two Shimuras were neighbours, maybe, but they didn’t know them and this was a city. It was important to be cautious.

“It’ll only be a minute, that’s fine.” Shimura-san waved him into the house, turning into the entryway without a further word. Hikaru awkwardly followed, kicking off his shoes and shutting the door behind him after a quick check to make sure it was the sort he could easily open if necessary.

He followed the man to a closed door not far from a sitting room with a couple of armchairs and a dining table in it, and stood by while he reached to open it. “Here’s where the mum and kittens are living at the moment. We had to switch rooms because _someone_ learned how to use a door handle, so we needed a door with a lock.” The cat in his hands looked extremely smug at that as the door opened, and Hikaru couldn’t blame it.

“A _door handle?_ ” He asked, incredulously. “It’s a _cat._ ”

“Uhuh.” Shimura said, grimly, and gestured him into a room full of conspicuous kittenish mewing. A host of very small cats made their way to his legs with haste, followed by one much larger cat that had to be the mother. Hikaru stared, thoroughly perplexed, as the white cat was lowered to the floor beside what he was meant to believe were its siblings. There were three of them, which, okay. But.

“…They’re really little?” He said, confused, of the three kittens. Because they really were substantially smaller than the white kitten. They looked _younger._ A _lot_ younger. “And their tails are short.”

“They’re Japanese bobtails, of course their tails are short.” Shimura said, fending off the kitten-swarm and gesturing him out of the room again. Hikaru moved through obediently, feeling suddenly extremely perplexed.

“But…the white one?”

“Long-tailed. Yes.” The man agreed, almost grimly, and led him towards the sitting room. “Do you want tea or something? I can do tea.”

“No, it’s fine.” Hikaru said, and was presented with a glass of water anyway. “Thanks?” He offered, following the neighbour’s lead and sitting down at the table. “…What’s up with the cat, then?” He asked, after a moment.

Shimura was silent for a few seconds. “Look. I’m not a superstitious man,” He began, which was not the most promising of openings, “but that cat is obviously a demon.”

Hikaru stared. “…What?”

“He’s six weeks old, but looks twelve. Or more.” The man said, with the obvious tone of someone beginning to recite a list. “He’s pure white but _not_ albino, when both of his parents are tabby with white. He has a _long tail,_ when _both_ of his parents have short tails and the short tail is a _dominant gene._ The bloody cat understands what we say to him, learned to open doors, learned to _use the actual toilet_ on his own, somehow unlatched the window to escape the first time, then removed a screen _and_ unlatched the window to escape the second time, and I swear sometimes the fucking thing is trying to talk. It’s creepy as fuck.” He paused, and added belatedly “Sorry for my language, or something. Shouldn’t swear around kids.”

“I don’t care.” Hikaru said reflexively, mind still going over that extremely weird list. “That’s, uh…” He searched for a word. “Weird.”

It wasn’t the most unbelievable thing he’d ever accepted. Really, he’d been haunted by a thousand year old ghost for years, it wasn’t that strange to imagine there could be other supernatural things about, and he sort of knew what sort of thing the cat was meant to be. A bakeneko, right? Or maybe a nekomata – but those were supposed to have two tails and be evil, which were not traits the weird cat seemed to have.

“The cat’s a demon.” Shimura said, with the settled air of someone who had accepted a fact and thoroughly resigned themselves to it. “So I wanted to warn you, because he’s following _you_ around for some reason, and if he hurts you I’ll…pay your medical bills, or hire an exorcist, or whatever.”

“He’s mostly just been really noisy and dramatic.” Hikaru said pensively. “Wants to get into my house, not sure why.”

“Yeah, well.” The man frowned. “I have basically no chance of selling the cat with his siblings, so he’s going to be around for a while. At this point I’m half considering sitting the thing down and making a deal with him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He’s damn well smart enough. I swear I’ve seen him nod before. It’s worth trying.” Shimura shrugged. “That’s really all I wanted to say – just to warn you he’s not a normal cat, and, yeah. He’s _going_ to get out again. I’m resigned to that at this point. If he causes you any trouble, let me know.”

Hikaru shrugged right back at him. “Yeah, sure.” He said, and that pretty much wrapped up the house visit.

\---

Hikaru saw the cat the next day, which somehow didn’t surprise him at all. It greeted him, as usual, as he left the house, its meow almost cheerful. It seemed in excellent spirits as it performed the rather confusing behaviour of rummaging about in a nearby bush, and then coming out with a piece of somewhat dirty paper in its mouth.

The cat rather pointedly deposited the paper on his shoe.

He stared motionlessly for a second, then bent and picked it up. It proved to be a note from the neighbour, reading ‘ _we made a deal. the cat knows he has to be back by the time it starts getting dark.’_

Getting a note expressly delivered to him by a _cat_ probably wasn’t the weirdest thing that had ever happened to Hikaru, but it was definitely up there on the list. He blinked, then looked down at the weird, definitely not normal cat. “So. A demon, huh?” He said, wryly, and the cat’s eyes narrowed balefully at him.

“Myiiieeeh.” It said, in another example of an utterance that was disturbingly close to ‘iie’. Considering Hikaru was now accepting this cat as a weird and supernatural entity, that definitely seemed intentional. The cat seemed annoyed at the question and produced a huff to prove it, straightening up with an imperious feline expression that seemed to be judging him for his words.

“Well, you’re definitely not a normal cat.” Hikaru pointed out. Its ears flickered, it huffed again, and _nodded._ Actually nodded. It was _surreal._ He felt an odd sense of vertigo at the clear evidence that he yet again had a paranormal presence in his life, and then felt a pang at that, because he had absolutely no desire to replace Sai with a weird cat. “…What do you want?” He asked it, eventually, wondering if it would be able to answer. ‘Iie’ seemed like something that was achievable for a cat, it was all vowels, but Hikaru doubted it could do anything more complex.

“Mow.” The cat expressed, nodding clearly in the direction of the front door. It moved over to it and looked up at him, hopefully.

“No.” Hikaru said. The cat looked wounded. “It’s….look, my mum’s allergic to cats. I don’t really care, but we can’t have cats in the house. You’re _fluffy._ You’ll get fur everywhere.”

_“Mroow.”_ The cat said, indignant and almost offended. _I would never,_ it seemed to say, though Hikaru was highly sceptical of this.

“I’m not sure why you want to get into my house so badly, but it’s not a good idea, alright?” He explained. The cat made a dubious noise at him. “I guess I’ll see you later, but I have things to do today.”

In fact, he had very important things to do today. Today was going to be his first match since Isumi. Today was his _return to Go._ It was _very important._ And, accordingly, this conversation was over.

“Bye.” Hikaru said, to a cat, and felt very bemused at his life. He shook his head, turned away, and headed for the train station.

\---

It is generally widely acknowledged that Japanese summers are more humid than the average steam room, and while the temperatures generally aren’t as high, the ridiculous degree of humidity was more than enough to make everyone feel like they would melt. Accordingly, a house without air conditioning is pretty much _forced_ to have all or most of its windows open to avoid suffocating its occupants, or possibly also to avoid producing growths of mould that started looking like weird mushrooms within weeks.

Hikaru’s house did not have air conditioning. Hikaru’s bedroom was on the second floor, and due to the lack of low roofs or balconies of any kind, was a pretty safe room to leave the window open in. It would take a very dedicated criminal to reach that window, and so generally he left it open during summer whenever he could. This occasionally resulted in him having to fend off the increasingly horrifying Japanese insect life, and on one memorable occasion he’d even hosted a giant hornet, but it was worth it to not be knocked out by the heat as soon as he walked in.

Apparently, though, the open window had another consequence now.

Hikaru got home from his match, feeling satisfied and pensive and just a little sad. It really had been good to play again, and he was _glad_ to be back, to be living his life again, but…well, anyway, he was still feeling conflicted about things. He was prepared to spend the evening looking through kifu, maybe replaying his match of the day, but his mother’s greeting rather threw it off.

“Did you let that cat in, Hikaru?” She asked him without preamble as soon as she’d welcomed him home. “You _know_ I’m allergic.”

He looked up at her from arranging his shoes into the storage, bewildered. “No, of course I didn’t let it in.” He said, a little indignantly. “It wanted to come in again this morning, but I didn’t let it. Why?”

“I heard some strange noises in your bedroom earlier, so I opened the door, and it was in there.” She answered after a moment. “The door was shut so I couldn’t think how it had got in there, if you hadn’t let it in, but…”

Hikaru absorbed that for a moment. The cat, he knew, was capable of _opening_ doors, but he wasn’t so sure about the _closing_ part. “…Do you think it got in through the _window?_ ” He asked, incredulous, picturing the unforgiving stretch of featureless wall beneath his window. “What did you do with it?”

“I shooed it outside. It didn’t seem to have made any mess in your room, at least, though I think it knocked your Go stones over.” His mother shrugged, looking very pensive. “I don’t see how it _could_ have climbed through your window, it’s so high up. You’re _sure_ you didn’t let it in?” She asked again, severely.

“Completely. I promise, or whatever.” He said, befuddled. “I’m gonna…go look over my room, then, make sure it didn’t mess anything up.”

“Alright then.” She nodded agreeably. “Did you win your match today, by the way?”

He smiled at the thought, unbidden. “Yeah, I did.” He said quietly, pleased but still conflicted, and headed for the stairs.

His room, on first glance, had several little details that were off from how they’d been in the morning. He’d normally attribute things like that to his mother going in and cleaning up, but it wasn’t tidied now. It was sort of messy, actually. The kifu he’d left on the floor were still there, but they looked like they’d been spread out and crumpled a little, and covered much more of the floor space than they had in the morning. The pot of black stones _had_ been knocked over, spilled out onto the floor, and there were black and white stones scattered everywhere, including on the goban, which was weird. His stack of textbooks had also migrated to one side of the goban for some reason, looking lopsided but relatively stable. He moved past it without paying much attention, staring hard at his bed beneath the window.

There _were_ , on inspection, little depressions in the covers, as though some very small feet had walked across them. He leant over, looking at the window, and…yeah, there was some white fur in the hinge, fluttering lightly in the wind.

The cat had, somehow, gained access to the house through a _second-floor_ window.

Hikaru shook his head, impressed and bemused at once. He supposed it wasn’t an ordinary cat, it didn’t have to play by ordinary cat rules, but still. He wondered how it had managed it. Had it somehow clawed its way up the brick wall? Had it somehow jumped all the way, way beyond the height any normal cat should be capable of? He had no idea.

Well, at any rate, he’d have to clear up the mess the cat had made of the Go stones. How it had managed to spill them _onto_ the goban was beyond him. He stepped off of the bed, turned, and leaned forwards to reach for one of the stones on there-

And froze.

He stood stock-still for what felt like entire minutes as the shape on the board pressed itself irrevocably into his mind. It was _messy._ The stones weren’t really on the points, and were so off-centre it wasn’t always clear which intersection they were actually meant to be on, and so at first glance it had just looked like…mess. Mess in two different colours, and how had he not noticed _that?_

But…it was a shape. A definite shape, a _familiar_ one, with familiar hands that were burned into his memory more than perhaps any other game in his life. And there weren’t many of those hands, either - just the beginnings of what _should_ have been a full game, but had never been finished.

Hikaru stared at what was undeniably a recreation of his last game with Sai, and thought he’d forgotten how to breathe. His head swam, and he swayed on his feet. He sat down, the stones on the board practically screaming at him, and didn’t know what to think.

_The cat,_ he thought, dizzily, thoughts caught in a hundred different threads. Could the _cat_ have placed those stones? It wasn’t an ordinary cat, so the intelligence necessary for it wasn’t an issue, but the _game-_

The game. Hikaru’s fists clenched. He ruthlessly suppressed the parts of him that were starting to make connections, starting to _hope,_ and he got to his feet again. He stumbled downstairs in a whirl of motion, pulling his shoes on and grabbing nothing else but the door keys as he headed out.

He had to find the cat.

\---

The cat was not difficult to find.

He closed the door behind him, stood in front of it, and waited. The cat had always shown up there before, after all, so it was worth a try. If it didn’t work, he could go to the Shimura house and look for it there, but first-

With a leafy rustling, the now-familiar feline emerged into view. He looked at it as though he were seeing it for the first time. Long-haired and white, with the look to it that suggested it would be a very elegant cat when it was older. Intensely blue eyes, which in retrospect were…familiar. An utterly familiar shade of blue, though the shape was all wrong, seeing as they were _cat_ eyes.

The cat stepped forwards, almost cautiously now. It looked up at him, ears flicking nervously. “Mrow?” It inquired, settling near his feet. He knelt down to look at it properly.

Hikaru was aware that his hands were trembling. He shoved them into his pockets and tried not to think about it. “Mum says you were in my room.” He said, thickly, and watched the whiskers twitch. “Is that right?”

Deliberately, the cat nodded. It had gone quiet and solemn now, as though willing to be quiescent now that….now that it had done what it wanted, maybe? Now that it had got into his room and, and…

“Did you put the stones on the board?” He asked, barely able to force the words out.

Slowly, but unmistakably, the cat nodded again. It offered a small and gentle trill, and angled its head to the front door again. “Mow.” It said, and the meaning was clear. _Can I come in_ now?

He took in a deep, shaky breath. “…Yeah, okay.” He said, and stood up. “You’ll have to be quick, though. If my mum sees you she’ll shoo you out again.”

The cat made a thoughtful noise, tilting its head, and then turned the other way. It trotted neatly along the wall until it was directly beneath Hikaru’s window, looked up, and swayed conspicuously in the way that cats do when they’re judging distances. Hikaru watched, incredulously, as the cat launched itself higher than any cat had the right to be capable of, not quite to the level of the window, but high up enough that it could lodge its claws into the rougher brickwork nearby it. It looked like a very arduous process, but the cat dragged itself to the lip of the open window, pulled itself in, and disappeared from view.

Hikaru stared for a second, then turned around and went straight back into the house he’d vacated only minutes before. He ignored his confused mother, waving her off as he hurried upstairs. He found the cat at the goban, sitting conspicuously on white’s side of the board with paws tucked in and its posture remarkably neat and graceful.

It was still really small, though. Its head only just poked over the top of the goban. It probably wasn’t even at eye level with the stones, but…it was sitting there. In white’s place. In white’s place, in the unfinished game between Hikaru and Sai.

The cat looked directly at him, and reached out to tap a paw on top of the goban. It meowed expectantly.

“…No.” Hikaru said, hopelessly, not even sure what he was saying ‘no’ to, but he was saying it. He closed his bedroom door behind him, pulse thrumming in his veins, a hundred questions on his lips but all of them things he couldn’t bear having a negative response to.

The cat meowed again, even more insistently, and patted at the spilled black stones. Its tail-tip flicked, crossly, as it waited.

“ _No._ This is dumb. _I’m_ being dumb. You’re not-“ He stopped, the unspoken word aching in the air. He couldn’t voice it. He _couldn’t._ He couldn’t be wrong, he couldn’t be disappointed again, he couldn’t deal with that-

The cat stared at him, still looking expectant, impatient, a little pleading. It was…a familiar sort of expression, to see from beside this goban.

Hikaru stared back, wordless, for several tense seconds.

“Mrow.” The cat said, and slowly, Hikaru moved, wandering over to the other side of the goban as though in a dream. It felt like a dream. It felt like something he’d dream about, that he _had_ dreamed about, that he’d woken from feeling hollow and desperate a dozen times in the last few weeks alone.

The cat nodded to him, looking satisfied as he sat in his place, and then very deliberately _bowed_ over the board. The sight of it gave Hikaru a sudden and intense rush of vertigo. He could hardly breathe.

“…Onegaishimasu,” He answered, hoarsely, and bowed back. He stared at the board.

…It was his move. It had been his move, when he fell asleep, when he waved Sai off, when he assumed there would always be more opportunities to play. He’d thought about it since then, of course. How couldn’t he? He knew exactly where he would have played next, if he hadn’t fallen asleep.

Hesitantly, Hikaru gathered the spilled black stones back into the bowl, and set it to his side. He extracted a stone, and placed it, surprised that his nerves didn’t send it flying across the room. But…he placed it. He stared, and waited, and wondered what the cat would do.

The cat sat up on its haunches, reached out with a paw, and very carefully tapped at a point on the board. It could barely reach, it was so little. It also almost disrupted several other stones in the process, but…

Hikaru stared at the point that the white paw withdrew from, and swallowed. He nodded slowly, and reached out to pull the white stone bowl to him too. He placed the white stone where he thought the cat had gestured to, and looked up at it to check. It seemed satisfied.

He leant back to consider the stone. It was a sensible move. Solid. The sort of thing you expected in the opening hands. There wasn’t much to tell from it except that the cat knew how Go worked. He breathed, and placed the next stone.

The hands unfolded slowly. The cat had to be very careful where it indicated, and moreso the more stones came to occupy a space. On a few occasions, it hissed at him, and he moved the white stone in question until it seemed satisfied. It was considerably less neat and efficient than the system he’d had with Sai, and it took longer. Longer yet, because Hikaru was still shaking, hands trembling worse with every new stone, every play, every step closer to the midgame.

Knowledge hammered demandingly on his mind, becoming more and more insistent, louder and louder, far more difficult to ignore and near-impossible to discount. He wasn’t playing well. His defence was shaky in a way that might hold up against Waya, maybe even Isumi, but against anyone stronger…not a chance. The next move indicated with a white paw was…cutting. Brutal. It paved the way for a ruthless, monstrous assault into his largest cluster. He could already _see_ how it would unfold – he’d seen it a hundred times. Hundreds, even. He knew those plays, those hands, that _Go_ better than anyone.

Waveringly, falteringly, he placed the vicious white stone where it belonged, and withdrew his hand into a fist. His vision swam, blurry, the black-and-white of the board distorting into mad fluid shapes. He gasped, and his breath stuttered, and then he felt the salt burn of the tears welling in his eyes. He couldn’t have held them in if his life depending on it. His shoulders shook and he could barely see the white shape across the goban anymore, but – he knew. He _knew._

“Sai,” He said, hoarsely, and blinked the tears out of his eyes. They ran in hot lines down his cheeks as the world came into focus again – the goban, the cat on its opposite side, sat up on his haunches and supported against the edge of the board.

Carefully, gently, the cat nodded to him. And Hikaru absolutely fell apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Happy Hikago day! I tried but did not succeed in getting a paper cranes chapter ready. Something of that length and requisite effort is beyond me at the moment, but I have at least started chapter 23 now. Instead, here’s this, one of my favourite ideas I’ve had in reserve. Premise is that Sai’s unfettered soul accidentally caught on one of the foetal kittens, ‘possessed’ it, and turned it into a developing nekomata. Most of what I’ve thought up for this story is cute and fluffy and very silly, but the opening of it was always going to be quite emotional. How could it not be? This is pretty much the definition of crack treated seriously.
> 
> How I imagine Cat Sai: https://angorashow.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/color-winner-qgc-ladakedi-carte-blanche-2012-third-best-white-turkish-angora-of-the-year.jpg
> 
> He’s younger in this chapter than the cat in that picture is, and once he’s older his tail will be noticeably forking, but yeah.


End file.
